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“When you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over?” Trump told law enforcement officers in Suffolk County, New York. “Like, don’t hit their head, and they just killed somebody — don’t hit their head? I said, you can take the hand away, okay?”

The comment was met with applause from at least some of the law enforcement officers in the audience.

Gay, who hadn’t heard about Trump’s comments until a reporter brought them to his attention, said Saturday that the Austin Police Department has procedures for putting suspects into and taking them out of vehicles.

“Our procedure here is to get someone in as safely as we can without any harm to the individual,” Gay said. “Once we place them into handcuffs, they’re in our care, custody, control, and we believe that they should be cared for with kid gloves.”

“We’re not the judge and the jury,” Gay continued. “We’re the police officers, and we’re here to protect and to serve the whole community. It doesn’t really matter if they’re a suspect or not.”

Asked what he thought about the president’s comments, Gay said: “I’m just going to say that our philosophy is that we will treat everybody with dignity and respect no matter what the situation is.”

Interim Police Chief Brian Manley also spoke out against suspect mistreatment in a tweet on Saturday.

“An inappropriate attempt at humor,” Manley tweeted, “but our professional police officers rise above that type of conduct and will continue to do so.”

The department faced criticism last year over several use-of-force incidents involving people being taken custody.

Officer Cameron Caldwell was suspended after pepper-spraying a handcuffed man in the back of a police van during the 2016 South by Southwest Music Festival, an incident recorded on video by the police-watching group Peaceful Streets Project. Two of the officer’s supervisors were later suspended and demoted for failing to review the incident and notify the chain of command about other use-of-force cases.

An American-Statesman investigation last year also revealed the violent arrest of teacher Breaion King. Video showed officer Bryan Richter removing King from her car and twice throwing her to the ground after she refused to close her door during a 2015 traffic stop. Richter received the most minor form of discipline, counseling and additional training.

But in the aftermath of King’s arrest video being released last year, Austin police introduced a new level of oversight into use-of-force incidents, a “peer review” practice in which a commander outside an officer’s chain of command must sign off on encounters involving force.

Trump’s comments Friday about police treatment of suspects drew reactions from law enforcement officers and advocacy groups across the country.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police issued a statement that did not mention Trump by name but called for fair treatment of all people.

“Law enforcement officers are trained to treat all individuals, whether they are a complainant, suspect, or defendant, with dignity and respect,” it read. “This is the bedrock principle behind the concepts of procedural justice and police legitimacy.”

The American Civil Liberties Union said in a tweet that Trump was “urging lawlessness that already imperils the lives of people of color at shameful rates.”